


Levi's Christmas Tree

by tbmd1066



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Tree, F/M, Family, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5491061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tbmd1066/pseuds/tbmd1066
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi's Christmas tree is a symbol of his life, it always has been, and it makes him happy, until Hange gets her hands in there and makes it so much infinitely better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Levi's Christmas Tree

Levi’s Christmas tree is gorgeous, if he does say so himself. He’s never been particularly fond of the holiday in general, but he does like the decorations. He likes the way that everything sparkles like the stars. The decorations in his home are all silver and blue. They go perfectly with the glass and dark wood of his home, and the pale blue of the walls. The tree of course, is fake. There’s not a chance in hell that Levi’s bringing a real tree into his house. House plants are one thing, but a dying, shedding tree in the living room is quite another. So the tree is fake. It’s white as well, rather than green. It looks nicer with the blue and silver. All the ornaments match, and some of them are glittery, but not a lot, because Levi doesn’t like spreading it all over the house. All in all, Levi really likes his tree. It makes his living room look a bit festive, and it’s not too much of a hassle. It makes him happy.

 

Hange doesn’t seem to like the tree as much as he does. She’s at his apartment because she wants to show him some of her research before the holiday break at work, and she tells him the tree looks icy. It might not be meant as an insult, Levi supposed, but with Hange being such a warm and energetic person, he thinks it probably is. Hange is blunt, but not unkind, so she probably wouldn’t out and out tell him that she dislikes his Christmas tree. He doesn’t want to start looking at his tree with dissatisfaction, but he can’t help it now. His apartment is all very uniform. Very sterile. He’d thought that these were good things— things he wouldn’t want any other way. But Hange was a very different way, and now he was seeing that his apartment didn’t really look terribly lived-in, even if it was beautifully decorated.

 

The next year, he gets a new tree. It’s green, instead of white, and it still looks good with the rest of the apartment, which he’s allowed to become ever so marginally less tidy. It’s still completely clean, but there are a couple books on his coffee table, and he doesn’t always line up his shoes perfectly. Hange’s bad influence, he assumes. It has to be Hange, because the only ornament on the tree that doesn’t match all the rest, the only new one, is the one that she gave him for Christmas the year before. It’s a toilet. He’s pretty sure that she made it herself. It’s his favourite ornament. 

 

Having Hange living with him is mostly a good thing. There’s a lot more clutter, and a lot more cleaning, but he gets to hug and kiss her all the time now. It also means compromising on the Christmas tree. Because Hange’s brought over a lot of her own Christmas decorations, he has to get a bigger tree. They argued for ages over which garland to put up; Hange’s red and gold plaid garland, or Levi’s royal blue garland with the snowflakes. Eventually Hange won because Levi’s garland wasn’t actually long enough to fit the new tree. She’s also got different ornaments. They’re red and gold, mostly, but there’s also a bunch of handmade ones, and ones that she’s clearly bought solely because they are completely fucking hideous. He loves all of them. 

 

The tree doesn’t change much for the next few years. Hange occasionally gets new ornaments that are horrifyingly ugly. The tree doesn’t match the apartment at all. Hell, the tree doesn’t match _itself_ anymore. It makes Levi happier than it ever has before. That is until he sees her put up one of those picture frame ornaments with a photo from their wedding day. Amazingly, he loves that ornament even more than the toilet one she made for him. 

 

The kids each have to have their own “baby’s first christmas” ornaments. They’re cute, Levi thinks. Sweet ceramic things with little mice in pink and blue blankets, and another one in a purple hat. Later in the month, Hange puts up another photo ornament, but this one has a picture of Levi holding the babies and smiling. He recognizes the photo as one that she took while they were decorating the tree. 

 

The ornaments that the kids make cannot actually be hung. They’re just curved pipe cleaners with beads stuck on them, so they have to actually be balanced carefully on the branches. Hange tells the kids that they remind her of modern art, and the kids both beam at her. Levi cleans up the extra beads, and consistently picks up the ornaments whenever they fall off the tree. 

 

The kitten loves the tree much more than Levi loves the kitten. They let the kids settle on a name for the godless beast, so her official name is Princess Buttigris Felis, but Levi often just calls her Asshole, and unfortunately, that caught on much better than Princess Buttigiris Felis. Asshole likes climbing the Christmas tree and knocking all of the ornaments to the ground. Levi tried putting presents out early in a sort of barricade, but Asshole just climbs over them. Since that didn’t work, Levi must practice constant vigilance, and one can often hear Asshole yowling after getting smacked with a broom.

 

Asshole grows out of climbing the tree, and the kids grow into making better Christmas tree ornaments, and soon grow out of making ornaments altogether. They get better at decorating the tree. It’s a giant, disorganized mess of a thing. Levi loves it. He loves the way Hange clearly love it, and how the kids laugh and always point out the ornaments with their names on them. Every year at least one ornament breaks, but they’re usually just plain baubles. Sometimes they’re the icicle ones that Levi’s had ever since he first started decorating for Christmas, and that makes him a little sad, but there are always new ornaments that come to replace them. The tree still changes every year, but it’s a good thing.

 

Even after the kids move out, they make a point of waiting to decorate the tree until they’re all together, and then there are more handmade ornaments from Levi and Hange’s grandchildren, and another picture frame ornament has a copy of them all together. It’s Levi’s favourite ornament, and he knows that nothing will ever beat it out. 

 

Levi knows when it’s going to be his last Christmas. He does not concede to getting a real tree, but he does finally let Hange have coloured lights on the tree. He thinks it makes the tree look cluttered and messy at first, until she takes his hand in hers and smiles that brilliant smile at him and says “it looks so _full_.” And she’s right. That’s just the right word. It’s full of life, and experience, and memories. It still has most of the blue baubles from before Hange even moved in with him. It has the handmade toilet ornament. It has the one of Santa where he looks like the elephant man than a saint, the one of a clown which had made one of their grandchildren cry, and the one that’s literally just a plastic ball with feathers glued onto it that he couldn’t believe Hange had actually spent real money on. It has the kid’s first christmas ornaments, and Levi and Hange’s wedding ornament. It has little felt stockings that their grandkids made. It has a string of paper cranes that are now completely crumpled from getting shoved in a box every year. It’s a beautiful tree. More beautiful than it’s ever been before. When he tells Hange this, she reminds him that that’s how it looks every year, but he doesn’t care, it’s still true. It’s a symbol of his life, it always has been, and it makes him so blissfully happy. 

**Author's Note:**

> idk it's cute I guess  
> sorry about him dying n' stuff at the end and whatnot, but it's still sweet and hopefully not too sad. but if it is too sad, I am v sorry and will refund u with hugs.   
> Little bit of different formatting than my usual, but I think it works here.  
> Merry Christmas! <3


End file.
